Religious Programmes: A blooming
development in broadcast media
A Study Paper
by
Dr. S. Nandakumar & A. Christopher
Joseph Cruz
Address
Dr.
S. Nandakumar
Associate
Professor
Dept
of Journalism and Mass Communication
Periyar
University
Salem
– 636 011
Cell:
+919444086807
A. Christopher Joseph Cruz
Research Scholar
Dept of Journalism and Mass
Communication
Periyar University
Salem – 636 011
Cell: +91 9840995431
Subject
Media &
Religion
Key words:
Electronic-religion, Religious broadcasting,
Spiritual industry, Propagate, Cultural change, Social change, Ethical impact.
Religious Programmes: A blooming
development in broadcast media
By
Dr. S. Nandakumar*
A. Christopher Joseph Cruz**
Abstract
Religious broadcasting has moved, over the past
decade, from the margins of social and religious life to centre stage. The religious programmes on foreign
television channels were once unavailable before the proliferation of
transnational channels in India. Those channels have now become easily
accessible in India; subsequent to the Supreme Court verdict in mid 1990. In a
multi-religious society like India, religious television channels are mushrooming in every region of the country. Even the news channels today cover all
the religious festivals around India. Government controlled Indian Public
Broadcastings have allotted separate time slots for religious programmes.
This paper reveals the impact of religious channels among
people in a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic and multi-religious Indian
society. How altruistic is the spiritual industry?
Does the new religious broadcasting represent mere
broadcasting, or propagate or create a new kind of electronic-religion?
Furthermore, do the research advocates that do those religious channels create
any ethical impacts on the audience? Do they help human beings improve
themselves religiously? A survey
methodology with random sampling techniques was used to collect data in the
research.
There have been some sweeping claims made about its
significance-claims that it transcends both broadcasting and religion and has
assumed a place of unprecedented power and prominence in culture, and symbolic
formation.
Key words: Electronic-religion, Religious broadcasting, Spiritual industry,
Propagate, Cultural change, Social change, Ethical impact.
*Associate
professor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Periyar University,
Salem, Tamil Nadu, India.
**Research
Scholar, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Periyar University,
Salem, Tamil Nadu, India.
Introduction:
Religious broadcasting has moved, over the past
decade, from the margins of social and religious life to centre stage. The religious programmes on foreign
television channels were once unavailable before the proliferation of
transnational channels in India. Those channels have now become easily
accessible in India; subsequent to the Supreme Court verdict in mid 1990. In a
multi-religious society like India, religious television channels are mushrooming in every region of the country. Even the news channels today cover all
the religious festivals around India. Over the last couple of
years, more than two dozen religious television channels have mushroomed in
India. The list (Aastha, Sanskar, Maharishi, Om Shanti, Maa TV, MiracleNet, God
TV, Quran TV…) is getting longer every day. And the spiritual airwaves are
being beamed from all over the country as well as abroad. While Aastha operates
entirely from Mumbai, Sanskar has studios in Indore and Delhi. Maharishi
channel is telecast from the Capital while Maa TV is based in Hyderabad. Om
Shanti is Mount Abu-based. Quran TV beams out from Dubai. Both God TV and
MiracleNet have regional offices in Chennai while the former is telecast from
Jerusalem.
Several
new channels are in the pipeline. Even big names like Zee Telefilms have taken
the holy plunge with the launch of a 24-hour channel, Jagran, on January 14,
2011. Anil Anand, its business head, says, “The religious channel genre is
proliferating.” The fight for pious eyeballs doesn’t worry the new flag bearers
of spirituality. Other than these channels, Government controlled Indian Public Broadcasting has also allotted
separate time slots for religious programmes.
The
common understanding is that any programme which has clean message to improve a
human being - improve them religiously, ethically and socially and push them
towards being productive and effective, having ambitions. This general statement pushes the researcher
to test it with regard to the religious programmes that are being telecasted in
our country.
Therefore, this paper is trying to divulge the impact of
religious channels among people in a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic and
multi-religious Indian society. How altruistic is the spiritual industry?
Literature review:
Though many articles and books have been referred
to for this research paper, the researcher reviewed a few selected articles and
books that were in line with this present study.
Robert A. White in his article “Religion and Media
in the Construction of Cultures” in the book “Rethinking Media, Religion and
Culture” compiled by Stewart M. Hoover & Knut Lundby (1997, pp 37-54)
arrives at a firm conclusion that both media studies and religious studies are
coming together to create a new understanding of the media as a cultural
negotiation.
In “Televangelism” Bobby C. Alexander (1997, pp
194-208) observes that Televangelism, as ritual, has the capacity and potential
to contribute to the efforts of viewers to overturn their marginalized or
peripheral social standing within American Society.
“Making Sense of Religion in Television” by Alf
Linderman (1997, pp 263-282) studies the construction of meaning by individuals
from religious media. The audience constructing meaning out of religious
television not only shows how this type of television works in the minds of
different audience categories as they “make sense” of these programmes, but
also reveals how general qualities are ascribed to this medium by various
viewers.
“Christian Mass Media
Reach More Adults with the Christian Message Than Do Churches” is
a study paper by The Barna Group Ltd from Ventura, CA, USA (July 2, 2002). They
conducted a nationwide telephonic survey among 1007 adults. The majority of
Americans assume that the most common way of experiencing the religious faith
is by attending a religious service. But the survey by the Barna Research Group
reported a different conclusion. A greater number of adults experience the
religious faith through religious media, such as radio, television or books,
than attend churches or temples or mosques. However the Barna Group found a lack
of personal accountability. The research group suggested the incorporation of
people’s factor.
Ursula
Lindsey (2006) in her article “The new Muslim TV: media-savvy, modern, and
moderate” reveals that a talk show on a new Islamic satellite channel Al
Risala by a famous Egyptian actress Sabreen, at Cairo, Egypt has created a
religious revolution among Muslims. Thousands of viewers sent messages through
their mobile phones saying the programme brought positive changes in their
lives; ethically and socially.
One
or two studies have proved that the religious programmes on TV promote culture,
promote morality and promote religious values.
Methodology:
The study was conducted using the survey method
with random sampling techniques. It contains both independent and dependent
variables. The questionnaire was self administered.
150 questionnaires were distributed randomly across
Chennai city in which 125 responses were received. The paper has used both
primary and secondary sources. Questionnaires were passed randomly to different
religious people and not restricted to any gender, age, caste, literate,
illiterate, rich, poor etc. The research also took the form
of semi structured interviews with some media personals, religious leaders and
with the producers of some religious TV programmes. The data was analysed statistically using SPSS.
The Random Sampling method was chosen to give a
better cross-section of the population so as to gain a higher degree of
relative precision.
Data Analysis and Presentation:
Out
of 125 participants, 55.2% were male and 44.8% were female. The male
participants were slightly higher than the female. Among the respondents,
people from the age group of 40 and above responded more, with 45.6%. 32.8%
fell into the age group of 26 to 40, while 13.6% of the people were among the
age group of 18 to 25. Only 8% fell into the category of less than 18 years
old. Therefore, the majority of viewers were 26 years old and above, i.e.
78.4%.
In analysing the type of viewers in terms of
religion; Hindus were 29.6%, Muslims were 28% and Christians were 41%. Others
formed only 7.2%. 2.4% people said that they belong to no religion.
Collectively, the Hindus, Muslims and Christians formed 90.4% of the total
respondents.
Out of 125 respondents, 96 of them said they
watched religious channels or religious programmes. 29 of them said that they
didn’t watch religious channels or religious programmes. Almost 76.8% of the
people watched religious programmes on TV.
Among the respondents 54.1% of the people strongly
agreed and 16.6% just agreed that the religious programmes did affect their
personal lives and brought some changes to them. 21.87% of the people were
neutral in their stand. Almost 70.7% of the people said that the religious
programmes on TV brought some positive changes to their personal lives. This
finding affirms the same result of Ursula Lindsey’s study on Al Risala.
However, about 57.2% of the people strongly disagreed that the
religious programmes on TV were substitutes to the real services and rituals of
the religion.
Coming
to the point of whether those religious TV programmes promote any culture, most
people said that they promote western culture, but not their own local
culture. Semi structured interviews with
some religious leaders revealed that the intention is not to promote any
culture, but rather the religious values. The producers of the programmes also
shared the same point. However, some media personals were strongly arguing that
they do promote western culture. This research disclosed that half of the
respondents (52.02%) had the same answer.
Does
the religious broadcast make any social impact? The majority, (27.08%) of the
people strongly agreed, 32.29% of the people just agreed, 17.7% were neutral,
15.62% disagreed and 7.29% strongly disagreed. Table 1 below depicts this
clearly. About 59.37% of the people,
i.e. more than half of the people said that the electronic religion does bring
social changes in the human life. However the religious leaders and programme
producers opined that they don’t directly aim at social change. Their first
priority is to propagate their religion and its teachings.
Table 1
The
majority of the respondents, 24% and 35%, strongly agreed and just agreed that
the religious broadcast make ethical impact respectively. Table 2 clearly
speaks about this. 13.54% were neutral, 14.58% disagreed and 12.5% strongly
disagreed. About 59.35% of the people believed that this electronic spiritual
industry teaches a lot of good morality. Some of the interviews with the
parents revealed that religious broadcasts teach morality in an effective way.
The examples from the real lives of the preachers make the viewers think about their moral lives. Lots of excellent
stories with good morals, provide morality to their children in a simple way.
The religious leaders and the producers of religious programmes also affirm the
same. According to them, the most important aim of religious broadcasts is to
teach ethics and imprint moral values in the heart and minds of the people.
Table 2
Religious
broadcasts made religious impacts on about half of the (47.91%) respondents.
They agreed that these programmes helped them to grow more religious. One third
of the total respondents (22.91%) were neutral and one fifth of the total
respondents (18.75%) disagreed. Table 3 clearly illustrates them below. The
religious leaders expose that they do make lots of religious impact. They have
found that many people today experience their religious faith through media.
One of the producers of religious programmes of
Blessing TV, in the Tamil language, says the media teaches religious
values and the religion more effectively than the real religious leaders today.
People gain knowledge of their religion more from the media than the religious
preachers.
Table
3
Key
findings and suggestion:
It is observed in the present
research that religious symbols have always been, and continue to be, an
important foundation of any society. More than half of the respondents agreed
that the religious broadcasts do have some impact on them. They even prayed
while watching those religious programmes. Ajita Shashidar, in his article ‘TV
viewers tuned in to piety too’ that appeared in Business Line on January 21,
2006 also has the similar findings. Most of them said that they watched these
programmes to receive God’s blessings upon themselves through this electronic
media. Some of them even used these programmes as an alternative to their
regular religious practices. A total of 70.7% of the viewers agreed that the
religious channels touched them personally and paved the way for a change of
life.
However, it is observed that viewers
are not happy with the way things are presented. They are against presenting
the programmes with a western style. Most people expressed the opinion that the
adoption of local culture is important in the programmes. ‘Enculturation’
should be adopted to give a comfortable feeling to the viewers.
There are also some accusations
leveled against religious TV channels, in that they use religion for profit. The common man says that it is a business
for many people and those people are really making good money out of that. You
say the word Islam or Hindu or Christian, and people will rush to that. But the executives of many religious
channels say that in airing their channels they hope to promote their ideas
without losing money. If anyone loses money, that means he is not appealing and
does not have any viewership; which means he is not promoting his ideas.
Conclusion:
It
is concluded that television medium is used as a vehicle to propagate their
views and teachings by the majority of religions all over the world. Religious
messages that are authentic and of significance to contemporary culture, that
are expressed in meaningful and illuminating
languages, images and symbols that promote dialogue and collaboration,
will surely be received and welcomed by humanity. Media, especially TV, is the
effective medium today to enlighten people. The education of all religions
edifies good social, ethical and religious values that are the needs of the
hour. This is indeed a blooming development in the media and spiritual
industry, and it needs to grow in a positive way.
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